KK Hospital - Don't bother

The story left off with us at KK after our CVS results which thankfully turned out fine (Thank goodness we were so anxious on the procedure). We also get to know we have a dear baby girl based on the result as well. Below is the CVS review and scan at week 15 (20120912). It's so amazing to see our little daughter growing well!

KK was also conducting a research into new methods on how to better confirm babies' genetic health without undergoing invasion procedures such as CVS. We were asked to participate by donating the remainder of our CVS sampling which are to be discarded. We opted to contribute to their research. Any breakthrough which would remove the need for invasive procedures would benefit a lot of people and prevents them from undergoing unnecessary risk. Made all the sweeter by their offer of a free subsequent routine scan.

However, the whole episode was handled by a nurse (coordinator?) from myanmar. While she is pleasant enough, she failed to draw blood sample from J. Drawing of blood samples is a relatively easy and straight forward procedure which all nurses should be able to do, and do well. I know this as I was an army medic during my NSF days and drawing of blood is the easiest, as compared to putting in an IV drip line. I would even expect nursing students to be capable of doing this easily. So it was a surprise to see her having so much trouble and inflicting needless pain on J. I was almost aghast when she suggested drawing blood from the hands instead of the inner elbow. That is usually reserved for doctors when all else fails and the patient would experience a lot more pain. I hope this is not what they do in Myanmar and even if they do, it has no business being practiced here in Singapore. Anyway, we didn't make a fuss over it. She managed to get it on the second try and took much longer than is necessary.

Since we are at the topic of staffing, might as well cover the genetic counselor we saw. We encountered this genetic counselor who speaks in an over-the-top UK english accent, the type which gives you the impression that she is trying to be more british than british and acting out some sort of stage play. I am not sure if she is really a british citizen, raised in the UK, studied in the UK and only get transplanted to Singapore in the last month or so. She certainly looks Chinese. To some she will come across as some sort of a condescending british blue blood royal uppity talking down to peasants. But to be fair to her, she knows her stuff but I still can't bring myself not to get irritated every single time she speaks. We are here for a medical consultation, not attend a british musical.

In any case, she better start speaking more like locals if she is going to work here for long. It is only right. For instance, foreigners going to other countries have to adapt to the countries. Foreigners in Japan have to learn to speak Japanese and their customs or at least adopt some of their mannerisms and local-speak. Even if Singaporeans head to UK to work, we can't expect to get away with insisting in speaking only in Singlish with mandarin, malay and tamil words peppered all over the place. We have to adopt and adapt to the english way of speaking for ease of communication and comfort. So the same rule applies here in Singapore as well. While I am not expecting her to start parleying in Singlish, simply observing and following our language accents would go a long way.

Did I also mention long waiting times? We have to wait for long periods everywhere at KK. The crowd is always terrible and the waiting times are long. To be fair, that's the subsidized route. The difference is night and day when we went private at Thomson Medical Centre.

We returned in week 20 for another routine scan. However, the lab tech was not able to get accurate scans of the baby's heart due to the positioning which was resolved during a followup scan. All's good news the baby is growing well and fine!

However, later on we were told that one of J's blood supply artery to the uterus has a 'kink', so the blood supply could be affected somewhat. The doctors at KK told us there is nothing much to be done about this and the only solution is to wait and monitor. Not very comforting news and again send us on a panic run again. 

We were, at this point, rather sick and tired of the unnecessary panic and stress put onto us. From Down syndrome to CVS to incompetent nurses to irritating genetic counselors to low PAPP-A to artery kink? 

We understand that as medical practitioners they are simply trying to cover themselves by highlighting all and sundry risks but we need someone consistent who could evaluate the risks based on their experience. We should not be coming out of the consultation room feeling more stressed - We should have answers, solutions and assurance to keep J in a stress-free state.

We are also sick of seeing different doctors every time who provides varying degrees of advice with their own unique characters which at times we could not feel completely at ease for comprehensive discussions.

So with this latest scare, we decided to go for KK's private consultation in their private suite. It is not cheap at all for a senior consultant. We end up paying > $90 for the first session and having to wait more than 2 hours just to see him. But what breaks our backs is the behavior of the "senior consultant". But the moment we entered the room he exhibited impatience and his crude and dismissive manner in which he dismissed our concerns (which are the reasons why we are seeing him in the first place instead of his cheaper colleagues). He keeps on telling us everything is ok without going into details why he thinks it is "ok". I think we are more than capable of understanding medical conditions and his impatient arrogant attitude simply puts us off. He also did not check the patient's data on the docket and surprised us by assuming that J's blood type is O when it should be B, which she corrected. This led us to lose faith in him as a professional. 

The last straw came just when we were leaving the consultation room. J had a question and knocked on the door again to ask a question which lasted less than a minute. The "senior consultant" wanted to charge us later for extra consultation session!

This is obviously too excessive. Do they want all patients to take a stop watch and time each and every session? We definitely can, we can time him to see how fast and competent he is able to conduct his examinations, read through our case history and provide advice and assistance and if he falls short in any area, the patients would have the right to penalize him. Is this what they want? If not, then why are they doing it to us?

So we adamantly refused to pay the additional charges which to us is simply ridiculous. After much noise and back and fro with the payment counter staff, they agreed to waive the charges.

But this is enough to put us off KK for good. Our experience had been horrible and definitely not what we expect from a historically-respected institution.

(Later after we switched from KK hospital, they made it to the front pages of the news when it emerged that due to a new born baby tagging negligence and oversight, 2 couples took the wrong baby home. It was only identified due to the diligence of one of the parents. Needless to say both set of parents are severely traumatized by the incident and further DNA tests were necessary to verify the identity of the babies. The CEO of KK and his panel of management staff apologized publicly but as we can attest in our experience at KK, the focus and service is no longer there. It is only a matter of time before scandals such as these appear. The golden age of KK is long over.)

So we decided to switch hospitals to Thomson Medical Centre (TMC) and engage a dedicated and experienced gynae, which turns out to be one of the best decisions we ever made.